I am finally completely moved in to my apartment. All the furniture has been delivered and everything is put away and out of boxes - yay! And now I have to stop making excuses of “well everything’s too disorganized for me to focus…” and just sit down and write. I’m a big girl, I can do this - at least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Richard is at work, and somehow I think I would almost be more focused with him here. The weather is dreary as a big storm is about to hit the city, and just as I was about to type that I can’t wait for my floor lamp to arrive to brighten up the place, Pier 1 calls me to tell me it’s being delivered tomorrow afternoon - woohoo! Bridezillas is playing in the background…damn this show is addictive.
Focus. Write. Write something. Write anything. Argh. I have a measly paragraph. Good start, Calais.
As my boyfriend would say….Jesus tap-dancing Christ. It has been so long since I have posted anything.
Sooo updates: I’m coming into the final stretches of my senior year. Thank. God. I now have an incredible, amazing, simply wonderful boyfriend - we’ve been together since the end of summer and it is quite serious. Scary? Yes. Worth it? Hell yes.
I’m in class at the moment, so this can’t be a full update. But I will actually be posting on a semi-regular basis again.
Please stop getting married and having babies.
Mmkay….thanks, and bye.
Your smartly single friend,
Calais
Finished these yummy sugar cookies off today. Hello, five extra pounds…I haven’t seen you since the birthday cake incident.
I have now officially completed my fourth year at Angel Faces (first year as a full-blown volunteer), and I’m sitting in my large bed at home. I can’t even begin to describe this past week. It’s basically been like a million little bombs placed and slowly detonated one by one in all the painful parts of my past. I thought I had completely moved on, finally let go of all aspects of my injury. The anger, the sadness, sense of loss. And while I am still moved on from all of that, this past week was like a short-term reliving of it all. The girls’ anger, sadness, and loss all killed me a little on the inside. Seeing a few, still fresh from their injuries, struggling to walk and take care of themselves. Saying that my heart goes out to them would be sub-par of my actual feelings. As odd as it sounds, I couldn’t help but want to adopt them all and hug them and love them every day. Many of them are not blessed with supportive and/or loving families; some of them are forced to endure emotional (and sometimes physical) abuse from their own parents. The thought alone is heartbreaking, but seeing the results of such a negligent environment is soul-crushing.
One can only hope that they were able to gleam a smidgen of confidence, a hint of a feeling of love, or a slice of contentedness. God knows I’ll be thinking of them for years to come.
A gorgeous sunset with a rainbow in Grenada.
Yes, I’m publishing this sh*t because the research alone has been my life for weeks now. It’s not written in eloquent prose because, apparently, ethnography analyses are meant to be as dry as stale Keebler crackers.
“The tradition of dowry systems in Europe is virtually non-existent since modernization over the last 200 years. Since 1961, Indian law prohibits the request, payment or acceptance of a dowry as consideration for marriage, where “dowry” is defined as a gift demanded or given as a precondition. However, people throughout all levels of the caste system in Indian society continue to partake in the tradition in increasing numbers (Reddy and Rajanna, 1984) As the prevalence of this system increases, concurrently there has been a rise in dowry deaths - the deaths of young women who are murdered or driven to suicide by continuous harassment and torture by husbands and in-laws in an effort to extort an increased dowry (Anderson, 2003). From a monetary perspective, this is done because men can remarry and collect a second dowry. Another term, ‘burning bride’, is an arguably problematic phrase that has been used by Indian media and Indian researchers to discuss ‘dowry deaths’; that is, the deaths of young married women in India who are in many cases suspected to have been killed by husbands and husbands’ relatives for bringing insufficient dowry (Teays, 1991). The two terms are one in the same, but are used in very different cultural contexts. These terms are not to be confused with the ancient practice of Sati - the self-immolation of a widow on her deceased husband’s pyre. It is an incredibly rare tradition and commonly frowned upon in modern India (Kumar, 2003).
One of the problems faced in understanding the magnitude of dowry deaths is overcoming the treatment of Indian culture as being “other”. Analyses of “othering” by Western media argue that contemporary representations of Indian women in Western media have parallels to historical images of non-Western women in European colonial discourse (Gargan, 1993). These publications provide suggestions for producing culturally sensitive representations of non-Western women and their communities (Parameswaran, 1996). The examination of “othering” in “Coverage of ‘Bride Burning’ in the ‘Dallas Observer’: A Cultural Analysis of the ‘Other’” addresses the treatment of Indian culture by an American newspaper article, “Aleyamma’s Pyre”. To firmly ground the victim’s death within Indian tradition and culture, the practice of Sati is described early on in the story, and a connection is established between Sati and ‘bride burning’. Her death is invoked as an inevitable and irreversible conclusion to an Indian woman’s life: “Aleyamma Mathew may have been fated to die by fire”. This article arguably places all blame on the woman’s culture, not on the evident marital turmoil or alcoholism displayed by her husband: “Despite it all – despite years of drunken threats and vicious beatings – Aleyamma had resolved once again to preserve the traditions of her ancestors and her homeland, whatever the personal cost” (Sherman, 1993). Such misrepresentation only adds to the already ambiguous nature of dowry deaths.
Another problem faced by researchers is the inability to quantify such attacks. Statistically speaking, there is a large variation amongst collected data regarding the rate of dowry deaths per year. This stems from the nature of the attacks (i.e. use of kerosene or gasoline). Burnings are most common because the accelerants are readily available and can easily be disguised as accidental kitchen fires (Sharma, 2002).
While stories of “bride burnings” are popular among Western media outlets, the focus is on the “barbaric nature of Indian civilization”, not on the fate of the few women that survive (Stein, 1988). The few stories that exist are meant to elicit visceral reactions in readers and emphasize the great cultural divides by “othering”, using language such as “Middle Eastern countries do not think the same way as Americans” (Associated Press, 2008). Little is known as to what becomes of the survivors, and how forms of social shunning or rejection play a role in their emotional and physical recovery. The psychological devastation of burn injuries is widely studied, but mainly in countries with extensive medical and psychosocial resources available to the survivors (Ullrich et al., 2009). However, it is unknown how the added stress of loss in the woman’s caste standing and abandonment by her family affects the expected pattern of body image and social behavior recovery (Thombs, 2008).”
